In January of this year, Kim Kardashian had a baby daughter via a surrogate. While she wanted to give birth herself, apparently her last two pregnancies carried some risks, so she listened to her doctors who thought surrogacy was her best way to have another child.

My husband and I are not big on celebrating Valentine’s Day because we like to think we show love to each other all year long. J Sometimes we celebrate the day after Valentine’s Day so we can go buy the clearance chocolate. Still, we try and do something simple, like cook a steak dinner after the kids go to bed or bake a delicious dessert that has chocolate in it.

A friend from high school just celebrated her son’s 6th birthday. I remember getting a call from her when my oldest son was only a couple of months old. I was walking into work when she told me that she was pregnant. Her and her boyfriend were not planning on having a baby, yet here they were. Now this week, in honor of her son’s birthday, she posted this:

I started dating my wife while we were in college. Like any dutiful boyfriend I began to make plans for our first Valentine’s Day when Lisa informed me that she wouldn’t be available for a date on February 14th. It was her roommate’s birthday and several of their friends planned a birthday party for her. Lisa said she would make it up to me by cooking me dinner on February 15th. She enlisted her friends to dress as waiters and we shared a romantic dinner for two in a common room in her dorm. I was so caught up in the moment that I proposed to her that night. I had been planning to ask Lisa to marry me and was working on an elaborate proposal scheme, but that night just seemed right. I didn’t even have a ring yet, but she said yes. We’ve celebrated Valentine’s Day on February 15th ever since.

Nathan and I met shortly after he moved to Denver from his hometown in Idaho. I was heading up our parish’s Young Adult Softball team and we needed more guys before tournament weekend, so he and his brother-in-law signed up for our fledgling little team. Maybe it was an answer to prayer? Nathan really hit it off with some of my friends who were also on my core team for the youth group I ran, and they asked him to join our core group of Young Adults. Join he did, which was the answer to prayer #2, because we really needed some male core members for our youth group.

When I was in college, I had friends that began dating their freshman year. I remember passing them in the hallway between classes our junior year. They were right in the middle of the hallway, just staring into each other’s eyes. I stopped to talk to a friend, and then passed by this couple again five minutes later to get to class. They were still staring into each other’s eyes, not saying a word. It was so striking to me that I remember it a dozen years later. At that time, it made me feel uncomfortable to think of staring another person in the eyes so close for that long, but perhaps it’s because I had never been in love yet.

I was hesitant to write on prayer for fear of feeling like a hypocrite. Truth be told, I do feel like one. You see, my prayer life is not terribly consistent or so amazing that I can tell you confidently that I am great at praying. I struggle to make the time for prayer and to tell the Lord that He is first in my life. Lately I can feel the wrestling deep within my soul: spend time in quiet prayer or scroll through my phone or watch a show? Sometimes, the show wins out. And sometimes, I am able to carve out space in my day for quiet prayer. What this means is that I’m trying. And I’m honest with the Lord about how hard it is sometimes, and I tell him that I’ll keep on trying.

Now that you have a place set aside for prayer, a time for your appointment, and you know whom you are meeting, let’s talk about what to do next. Remember, Jesus is our model for prayer, and he taught us to pray saying, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” So let’s take the Our Father step by step to walk us through our prayer time.

Something I’ve discovered in my work in ministry is that many Catholics don’t really know how to pray. They may be able to pass a test about doctrine, but are lacking when it comes knowing Christ personally. You can memorize your prayers and go to Mass on Sunday, but that doesn’t mean that you really have a relationship with the Lord. For many, it’s likely that you really haven’t been shown how to pray.

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